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03/02/2014

☆Pang Man Part 3 - The Beauty Of Local Multiplayer - "Why I Bought A Wii-U"☆#GamersUnite #WiiU

Pang Man Part 3

Our favourite purveyor of all things Video Games steps back into The Freezer for a further rummage through Retrogaming History to tell you exactly why he bought a Wii-U...

Pull up a seat and listen to what the great man has to say on the subject of Local Multiplayer Games & Nintendo's much derided next gen console...

"I have a confession to make – I don’t own a PS4 or an Xbox One or even a PS3.

And even though these 3 consoles were out at the time (or at least had their release dates confirmed), 6 months ago, I decided instead to buy a Wii U.....

A Wii U you say?

The console with virtually no games and pathetic sales?! Are you nuts?

Well yes and let me explain why......

The reason is my love of local multiplayer.

Nowadays if you want to play with your mates –the majority of the time you have to go online.

And whilst online multiplayer can be great, somehow I miss the face to face action you used to get with local multiplayer.

For me the best games growing up were the multiplayer ones that I could play with my friends or siblings with everyone in the same living room.

I mean who can forget the awesome 4 player Golden gun mode in Goldeneye on the N64?

Or the insane battle-mode on Super Mario Kart!

Using drifts to just make it around the corner to avoid the Shell hitting your last balloon!

Super Bomberman, where each player would start in their own corner of the screen before moving towards the centre to outwit their opponents. And trying to avoid the one person who would recklessly drop bombs everywhere and who more often than not would kill themselves accidentally! Then panicking as the screen started to fill in once the timer ran out.

Co-operative 2 player games such as Double Dragon on the Master system, Golden Axe on the Megadrive or Time Crisis 2 on the PS2, where you could team up with a buddy to take on evil.

What about Streetfighter 2 Turbo –“winner stays on”, matches, that got so competitive that fights and sulking were not uncommon.

Or International Superstar Soccer (now known as Pro Evolution soccer) –showing endless slow motion replays of goals (sometimes from different angles!) with personalised commentary to your conquered foe, just to rub it in.

One of the funniest things about local multiplayer is seeing a “dance of victory” or the mockery that takes place live when someone loses. Quite often the loser will blame the controller, call the loss lucky or a fluke. But nothing could ever beat the old classic excuse of, “I wasn’t ready!”

Yes you can laugh at someone over online multiplayer but seeing a reaction in person is and always will be so much sweeter!

So when people ask why I bought a Wii U, the answer is because it is the one console that embraces local multiplayer. Of course there are other local multiplayer games still around on other consoles (Little Big Planet, for example) but usually these are few and far between.

The Wii U may only bring out one good game a year, but at least more often than not, that game will allow me to have friends who can all participate together in the same room.

Wii U games, like Super Mario Bros U, The Wonderful 101, Super Mario 3D World, Nintendoland and the soon to be released Super Smash Bros and Super Mario Kart can all be played by 4 players. Futhermore some games which are 4 players on other consoles (such as Sonic All Star Racing Transformed) are able to incorporate 5 player s on the Wii U via the additional screen on the Wii U gamepad.

Sadly outside of Nintendo, other companies have little interest in including local multiplayer as a feature in most games. A prime example of this is the latest Need For Speed game–Most Wanted, which I felt is a game that screamed out for split screen racing.

I hope to be proved wrong, but to me it appears that the incorporation of local multiplayer into console games is a sadly dying concept."